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The ''Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1)'' is a composition for orchestra by American composer Charles Ives. It was composed mainly between 1911 and 1914, although sketches for the work date from 1903, and the latest revisions were made in 1929. The piece is famous for its use of musical quotation and paraphrasing. ''Three Places'' consists of three movements in Ives' preferred slow-fast-slow movement order: :I. ''The "St. Gaudens" in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)'' :II. ''Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut'' :III. ''The Housatonic at Stockbridge'' The three movements are ordered with the longest first and the shortest last, and a complete performance of the piece lasts eighteen or nineteen minutes. As he does in his ''Orchestral Set No. 2'', Ives inverts the fast-slow-fast movement order typical of most three-movement works, using instead a slow-fast-slow order. The piece has become one of Ives' most commonly performed compositions. It exhibits most of the signature traits of his style: layered textures with multiple, sometimes simultaneous melodies, many of which are recognizable hymn and marching tunes; masses of sound including tone clusters; and sudden, sharp textural contrasts. Each of the three movements is named for a place in New England, USA. Each is intended to make the listener experience the unique atmosphere of the place, as though s/he is there. To that end, Ives’ paraphrasing of American folk tunes is a particularly important device, providing the listener with tangible reference points. The intention was to make the music accessible despite its avant-garde chromaticism. ''Three Places in New England'' aims to paint a picture of American ideals, lifestyle and patriotism at the turn of the twentieth century. ==History== ''Three Places in New England'' was composed between 1903 and 1929. The set was completed in 1914, but was later revised for performance in 1929. The second piece, ''Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut'' was created from two short theater orchestra pieces composed by Ives in 1903. These pieces, ''"Country Band" March and Overture'' & ''March: "1776"'', were completed in 1904. Lyman Brewster, Ives' uncle, had asked him to compose the pieces for his play ''Major John Andre'' which was never performed due to Brewster's untimely death. In the early fall of 1912, Ives began tinkering with these compositions again. The satisfaction that Ives derived from working on the ''Fourth of July'' (third movement of his ''Holiday Symphony''), in which he used the trio (or middle) section of ''1776'', may have been the catalyst for inspiring him to reuse these lost songs and create a longer piece. By October, Ives had completed an ink score-sketch of ''Putnam's Camp''. The final version of the piece clearly resembles its source materials, but many of the complex musical jokes that littered the originals had been replaced with simpler alternatives. ''The Housatonic at Stockbridge'', the third piece in the set, was composed in 1911 along with the opening piece, ''The "St.-Gaudens" in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)''. By 1912, after finishing ''Putnam's Camp'', Ives had settled on the form of a three-movement orchestral set, and had written the majority of it. In 1929 Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor of the Boston Chamber Orchestra at that time, contacted Ives about the possibility of performing ''Three Places''. Slonimsky had been urged by American composer Henry Cowell, Ives' contemporary, to program an Ives piece for some time, and ''Three Places'' caught his attention. The thorough reworking required to transform ''Three Places'' from an orchestral score to one that could be performed by a much smaller chamber orchestra renewed Ives' interest in the work. Slonimsky required that the piece be re-scored for: 1 flute, 1 oboe, 1 English horn, 1 clarinet, 1 bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 percussionist, 1 piano, 7 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and 1 string bass – a much smaller orchestra than the original. Ives was glad to have his piece played, but his comments on the re-scoring include, on the full score of ''The Housatonic at Stockbridge'', "piano may be used for Bassoons throughout... a poor substitute...". Three Places was first performed on February 16, 1930 under Slonimsky's direction before the American Committee of the International Society for Contemporary Music, in New York City. Although it had been rehearsed only once, the Committee was sufficiently impressed to recommend the work to the International Society, which surprisingly turned it down for performance at its festival. The first public performance was scheduled for January 10, 1931. Ives himself attended – in fact, he was funding the concert himself. The performance received mild applause, and Ives congratulated the performers backstage – "Just like a town meeting – every man for himself. Wonderful how it came out!". After the mild success of the first performance, Slonimsky and Ives were inspired to take ''Three Places'' abroad: Ives is one of the first American composers to have been played outside America. Slonimsky conducted ''Three Places'' in Paris on June 6, at a concert he described as "absolutely extraordinary" because so many important composers and critics of the time were in the audience. Their first experience of Ives left them impressed: Ives' music was not just interesting because it was composed by an American, it also fascinated them because the music really described America. Although the listeners didn't understand all the cultural references, Ives was calling attention to American ideals, issues, experiences and perspectives. For instance, in ''The St. Gaudens'', Ives paraphrases ragtime, slave plantation songs such as ''Old Black Joe'' and even patriotic American Civil War tunes such as ''Marching through Georgia''. The combination of such songs conjured up images of the fight for freedom in America. International recognition solidified the image of Ives as an American composer, especially strengthened by his use of borrowing from typically American sounding pieces. ''Three Places in New England'' became the first of Ives' compositions to be commercially published. Slonimsky was in touch with C. C. Birchard (a publisher from Boston) on Ives’ behalf, and by 1935 the two had negotiated a deal. Ives and Slonimsky both painstakingly proofread the score, note by note, to make sure the engravings were correct. In 1935, Ives held a copy of his first work in his hands. He had requested that the binding bear his name in as small a font as possible, so as to not appear egotistical. For many years, very little interest in performance of ''Three Places'' was aroused by its publication. After Slonimsky's retirement from conducting, the piece lay dormant until 1948, when longtime BSO concertmaster Richard Burgin programmed ''Three Places'' on a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert. The current practice of performing Ives' chamber scores rescored for full orchestra was thus established. In the 1970s, interest in ''Three Places in New England'' was piqued once again, this time regarding the differences between the original 1914 scoring, much of which had been lost, and the 1929 chamber-orchestra rescoring for Slonimsky's chamber orchestra. After extensive research by James Sinclair at Yale University, he concluded that the 1914 orchestration could not be recreated in its entirety since only 35% of the second movement had survived Ives' cutting for the 1929 version. Sinclair created what is currently believed to be the closest replication of the 1914 score for full orchestra by extrapolating Ives' scraps, sketches and notes. The world premiere of this version took place on February 9, 1974 at Yale University's Woolsey Hall, with the Yale Symphony Orchestra, conducted by John Mauceri, honoring the composer's 100th birthday. 〔San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 22, 1974,〕〔Yale Symphony Program Notes, February 9, 1974〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Three Places in New England」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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